This month, Emma kicked off the program with her discoveries at the West Surrey Family History Society Fair. There, she spoke with several of the specialists in their “help desk” stalls, including Graham Bandy, who helped her identify a long-cherished photo.
You can read more about that in her recent post for
“A Genealogy Fair and a Mystery Solved.” What a terrific reminder of the extraordinary resources available to you among local historical societies, antiquarians, and collectors.
Today’s episode focused on a theme Emma has wanted to explore to discover the actors and other thespians in her family tree. She’s kindly offered her slides here as a reference.
As with each episode, Emma thoughtfully included several unexpected tips. Among them were:
Keep an eye out for stage names that are distinct from birth names. Regulations may require the connection to be printed in a newspaper.
Wikipedia.org: Most series (such as movies or television) will have Wikipedia pages listing who was in each episode. If such a series page doesn’t exist, you can create one yourself.
eBay: Anyone who was an actor or in theatre may have advertising or newspaper writeups treasured by collectors. Don’t overlook collectors’ sites like eBay. Search by title, topic, author — even address.
Hathi Trust: A tremendous resource for digitized books, pamphlets, and documents.
Abebooks.com or abebooks.co.uk, a reseller of out-of-print, rare books, fine art, and collectibles.
Google searches (use “” around groups of words, “-” or “+” for exclusions or inclusions, for example.) And while searching, look for…
1) Theaters, production companies, and more
2) Photos – search from photos using images.google.com or lens
Use Google alerts for search terms you are always on the hunt for.
For more tips, view all past episodes of Emma Explores here, and join us for our Emma Explores program on December 19th. That will be the last program of the calendar year.
All of Projectkin's programs are listed on the Projectkin Events Calendar.
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